Sean Martin

Sean Martin (A.K.A. The Torso Boy) is an independent blogger and artist. He started blogging regularly in 2013, sharing personal experiences and reviewing different media as he comes across it. As an artist, Sean has been drawing most of his life. With training and experience as a 3D animator and digital painter, he uses these skills as a freelance artist when he’s not practicing them as a hobby. His first piece sold in 2007 at Arizona’s local Science Fiction and Fantasy convention, CopperCon, as the artist guest of honor.

Sean, in fact, has a lot of experience at conventions. Attending many of the local events at an early age, he was raised around fans. In 2004 he started working as staff for the conventions and went on to regularly taking up a committee position for disability services. In this time, he has helped as security, event hosting, convention operations, banking, registration, and even event planning as temporary chairman of Arizona’s HexaCon16. With this experience, Sean has been more aware of the inner workings of conventions and better equipped to evaluate them even as an individual with a disability.

Though Sean is disabled, it allows for a different view of the world around him. From birth, he has had Thrombocytopenia Absent Radius (TAR) Syndrome. This primarily exhibits a shortness of limbs, fused joints in the extremities, and a low platelet count. Most infants with TAR Syndrome do not survive their first year and those that do are mentally compromised. With Sean’s fortunate predicament in avoiding both of these outcomes, it puts him in a unique position to observe the world around him despite his physical limitations.

Now, Sean continues to blog about his experiences as someone with TAR Syndrome along with the opinions of the world that come with it. He continues his art as a side project and has even given copies of his work to the people they are based on such as Bruce Campbell, Mark Sheppard, and John Rhys-Davies. Other professional works include the cover of Christopher Turco’s Gweldon and a number of private commissions.